Tidbits

I had a long post for today on how I go about planning a sweater, from doodle to swatch to FO - but it's closing on 4:30 all of a sudden, and there are a thousand things left to do yet that all seem to need doing right! This! Second! So, just for fun:

This is what I called a Dutch coronet - "Dutch" refers to the style of braid (strands cross under each other and make the braid stand out in relief, as opposed to a flat French braid), and "coronet" refers to it looking, well, like a small, tight crown. I've seen it called a crown braid, a Heidi braid, all kinds of things - in any case, done tightly on slightly damp hair, it's clean and neat and sturdy enough to last all day. I like it for sports because it keeps the hair out of my face, and leaves no tail to whip around into my eyes or tangle in equipment - helpful when being pulled around behind a boat at 30mph, or doing rescue diver drills 90 feet under.

Here's an excellent set of instructions on how to do it, though it's a lot more complicated than the way I go about it - I start above one ear, go across the top of my head and back around, taking in new hair from the outside edge only. I then tuck the tail under the outer edge of the braid and hide it with one or two carefully-placed pins. Voila - my crazy mane of unruly hair cowed into submission for a few hours.

Yarn for sale

I don't really have any stash to speak of, so I've never felt the need to do this before - but I know for a mortal certainty that I will never, ever use this yarn and would rather send it to someone who will. It's Dale Stork in a bright blue and a nice cream. I was planning on using it in a nautical-stripe type thing, but the color isn't particularly flattering to me - it seemed fresh and summery in the store, but each successive peek into the bag on the way home showed the color as brighter and brighter, and uglier and uglier against my skin. So:

If sold as a lot (my preference), I'll throw in USPS priority shipping free.

The blue is very bright - the color in the photo is (believe it or not) true on my monitor, but you might like to check out the color card at Yarndex. Or, click here: hex value #33CCFF is very close to this yarn, in all its Caribbean glory. It doesn't work for what I had planned, but it might work perfectly for you.

I never knew how that was done; you bring back memories for me. My granny used to wear her hair like that all the time but she would go round and round and round as her hair was really long and thin. She was so cute, at 90 some odd years old she would sit in her rocker on the porch of the Okalahoma trailer with a cup sitting right next to her. Once and a while she would, without looking, spit her chew right into the cup.

I came across your sight a few days ago and really enjoy it. You are inspirational and refreshing. I love knitting and am fairly new to blogging. My 16 year old daughter is a knitter and a successful competitive ice dancer. She gets her license in a few days so I will have more time to knit and figure out the blogging. Your braiding website is a get resource for an ice dancer!